Photoshop CS6 Beta: New Features for Photographers

The release of the Adobe Photoshop CS6 Public Beta gives both new and current users the chance to explore the latest additions to the company's venerable image editing application. In what has now become the norm for Adobe, full version updates of Photoshop are preceded by a public beta period. This is intended not only to generate excitement about new features but to glean user feedback before the final shipping release. The beta software is available for download free of charge at Adobe Labs.

Its name aside, Photoshop caters to a wide range of professionals, from designers and illustrators to forensic scientists and 3D animators. In this article we're going to introduce the CS6 features most relevant to Adobe's photography-based user community.

So what can you look forward to in this new version? For starters, the entire user interface has received a makeover, with a new color scheme and redesigned icons. Content-Aware technology has been applied to both the Patch tool a brand new Move tool. A collection of photographic blur filters is introduced and video editing support has not only been expanded, but will be made available in both the Standard and Extended shipping versions of Photoshop CS6.

Many other enhancements that you'll find, like larger brush sizes and faster filter performance have been made possible by increased reliance on the video card's GPU (Graphics Processor Unit). As such, Adobe suggests a video card with a minimum of 512MB VRAM. Mac users should also note that CS6 does not support 32-bit machines. You can read a full description of the system requirements at the end of this article.

Once a final version of CS6 is launched, we will be publishing in-depth tutorials which demonstrate specific tools and techniques. Right now though, our aim is simply to highlight the changes that directly impact a photography-based workflow so that you can easily identify key features and start exploring the public beta on your own.

UI redesign

As you'd expect, CS6 offers a number of new tools and functionality. Yet, the most immediate change for any previous Photoshop user is undoubtedly going to be the UI (user interface) redesign. For the first time in 22 years, the team at Adobe has given Photoshop a complete makeover. Along with the more obvious changes you'll see below, roughly 1800 icons and 250 cursors have been redesigned.

Photoshop CS6 launches with the Application frame enabled and an interface design that features light text on a dark background.

By default, CS6 offers a much darker background palette to surround your image than previous versions. A number of icons have been redesigned and Panel names are now displayed in sentence case rather than all caps. In the screenshot above, look carefully along the bottom left (highlighted in red) and you'll notice two tabs; one for Mini Bridge and the video Timeline. Clicking on either will extend the tab up into a filmstrip-style panel that runs horizontally beneath the image area.

You do have a number of options for changing the UI color scheme by going to Preferences>Interface. The most crucial of these, in my opinion, is the ability to set the Background fill and Application frame colors independently. In each of the examples below I have set the Background fill to medium gray while changing the interface color among four available presets. Note that you can also choose a custom color for each.

Black interface with medium gray Background fill.

Dark interface with medium gray Background fill.

Medium gray interface with medium gray Background fill.

Light gray interface with medium gray Background fill.

With CS6 you can also display 'rich cursors' that show contextual information such as dimensions, angle of rotation or other adjustment parameters right alongside the cursor, as shown in the example below.

The rich cursor information is context sensitive. When using one of the marquee tools you can view the dimensions of the marquee you're drawing as well as the XY coordinates of its location. You can also specify where this information is displayed in relation to the cursor. In the example shown here, I've set it to display along the bottom right edge.

Auto and background saves

Arguably one of the most important additions in CS6 is Photoshop's ability to automatically save your open document(s) at user specified intervals. In addition, you can have Photoshop perform all of its Save operations in the background. When editing large files this allows you to continue working after hitting 'save' instead of waiting for a progress bar to complete.

You control the behavior of the Auto save in Preferences>File Handling. A pop-up menu (shown above) allows you to determine the interval at which Photoshop saves your work to a recovery file. In the checkbox above this one you can also have Photoshop perform all of its Save operations in the background.

As you work, Photoshop creates a temporary recovery file on your hard drive that updates periodically to reflect the current state of your document. Should Photoshop crash with your document in an unsaved state it will, upon relaunch, open a document with '-Recovered' appended to its name that contains the most recent auto-saved version. It's important to note that the recovery file is a separate document from your working file - it doesn't over-write the last point you intentionally saved. The recovery file is deleted whenever you invoke a Save or Revert command or close a document without saving.

The example for Iris Blur that you show is unrealistic - the model's shirt should remain in focus as well, not just her neck and face (because the shirt has the same distance to the camera as the face).

Yet i am sure there will be many unrealistic "romantic dreamy" blurs starting from today all over the place. Face clear, all the rest blurred. It makes me feel dizzy.

In the case of the photo you're using in the blur example, the tilt-shift blur would have been more useful (in this case, it would not have created the typical trendy tilt-shift effect, but would have been useful anyway because of the way subject and background had been arranged).

OMG! You can't completely replace a big sensor and expensive wide aperture lens with a piece of sftware yet?! That is so bad...

TBH. Making correct iris blur needs advanced 3D information, your pictures do not have this, they are 2D representations, so you can never get the result you are looking for, this have to be done even before your sensor captures the image...

And, that is an example. You can actually get some quite impresive results with iris blur, if you manually mask the areas as they are in a 3D scene and apply increasing amounts of blur pr. mask...

As a user of LR4, the new controls are so much better IMHO. Where "fill light" was very rough on mid-tones, the new shadows control and black point is much easier to work with because they don't affect mid-tones in the same way. (black point, white point works like levels output control in PS, shadows work like "fill light" but only on the darker tones.

adobe did not fake anything.it is quite common to use a gauss blur for blind deconvolution algorithms.

problem is the public will not understand it and think it is fake.that is the problem with science... the public often has no clue.

"The fundamental task of image deblurring is to de-convolute the blurred/degraded image withthe PSF that exactly describes the distortion. Firstly, the original image is degraded using theDegradation Model. It can be done by Gaussian Filter which is low-pass filter used to blur in image. This ringing effect should be removed before restoration using edgetrapping. After removing the ringing effect, blind Deconvolution algorithm is applied to the blurredimages. It is possible to renovate the original image without having specific knowledge of degradationfilter. Recent algorithms have afforded dramatic progress, yetmany aspects of the problem remain challenging and hard to understand."

Adobe has its work cut out for them if they are going to convince me to update yet again. The "problem" is that CS5 is actually overkill for my needs. So many features... so little reason to use them. I only upgrade from CS3 to get 64 bit.

It's interesting that the features which cause the most "wow" (context-sensitive fill, etc) are the ones I have never touched, while on the other hand I'd really like to see improvements made to re-size (make it gamma aware and add advanced upsizing technologies), curves (make the dialog larger for better ease of use), and basically just further improvements to existing, commonly used tools.

If I only want Camera RAW update to the level of $150 Lightroom,I need to purchase full CS6 upgrade for $350.Why can't you simply release Camera RAW as a separate software for $49 or so and allow me to keep my CS5 I'mperfectly happy with?

I hate libraries so Lightroom is not good SW for me. I prefer freedom of editing pictures anywhere I choose and easiness of transfer settings from folder to folder, drive to drive, computer to computer...

PS CS6 seems to offer little in inovation. Editing video is nice, but I bet Director Pro does a better job. Moving content aware is a new -and probably little used, feature. I am sure I will need ACR 7 as new cameras are introduced but it is a real shame I can't buy it as a seperate plug in. As for new user interface and icons, this will simply slow me down. Not real happy. So many real improvements left out. Maybe this is a "rush to judgement". We shall see.

Mescalamba: I know you commented snowboarder but let me add a different angle of view: I have already got Capture One 6 Pro. (I use Capture One since version 4.) Unfortunately it's output for my new Sony A77 is far behind Adobe Camera Raw output. In fact I would not hasitate to mark it as terrible. :-( And as I have seen right now ACR 7 beta is even better.

I'm still on CS4. Can't beat Photoshop for dodging and burning layers.

But I don't like the library system type organisers, and store my downloads as dated folders. I like to see the small jpg images within the directory folder view. I haven't managed to make this happen in Bridge.

Has cs6 improved its folder views???

cheers Dave S ;)

But I love FastStone for it's organisational, renaming, simple basic editing. Has jpg's in the folder view.

Adobe has announced the final versions of Camera Raw and DNG Converter 8.3, along with Lightroom 5.3. Different versions for ACR 8.3 are available for Photoshop CC and Photoshop CS6 - both from Adobe.com and through the update mechanisms in the software. DNG Converter is available for free for users of older versions of Photoshop. The latest versions brings support for 20 cameras, including the Nikon Df and Nokia Lumia 1020 that weren't in the release candidate versions.

Adobe has issued Camera Raw and DNG Converter 8.3 release candidates, along with a similar preliminary version of Lightroom 5.3. ACR 8.3 is designed as different versions for Photoshop CC and Photoshop CS6. DNG Converter is available for free for users of older versions of Photoshop. The latest versions brings support for 15 additional cameras, including most of the latest models from Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus and Sony. Eight lens correction modules are also added, including support for the Sigma 18-35mm F1.8.

Adobe has released Camera Raw 8.2 and Lightroom 5.2, as final versions of updates that were originally posted as 'release candidates'. ACR 8.2 is designed to work with Photoshop CC but, as promised, is also compatible with Photoshop CS6. It brings support for 16 additional cameras, including the Canon EOS 70D, Fujifilm X-M1, and Sony RX100 II, along with new lens profiles and bug fixes. For users of older Photoshop versions, Adobe DNG Converter 8.2 is also now available. Click through for more details and how to download.

Adobe has released Camera Raw 8.1 and DNG Converter 8.1, as final versions of updates that were originally posted as 'release candidates'. ACR 8.1 is designed to work with Photoshop CC but, as promised, is also compatible with Photoshop CS6. It brings support for 7 additional cameras, including the Olympus PEN E-P5 and E-PL5, Ricoh GR and Panasonic Lumix DMC-G6, along with profiles for 16 more lens, including Sigma and Zeiss's latest models. Click through for more details and how to download.

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